Remaining Fatigue Life Assessment of a Steel Railway Bridge Based on Fracture and Stress Life Approach
Publication: Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 28, Issue 4
Abstract
The railway bridge over the Bhakra River is an open web riveted steel girder bridge between the Bareilly–Rampur section that belongs to the Moradabad division of India’s Northern Railway. Simulation-based fatigue life assessment of this railway bridge was carried out for full-scale train loading given by the Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO). STAAD.Pro CONNECT Edition software was used to analyze the bridge, identify critical members, and calculate residual life for 25T-2008 loading at various speeds with stress bands of 5 and 10 MPa for a stress life–based approach. MATLAB software was used to find the number of repetitions corresponding to the stress history diagram. A linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM)–based approach was also applied to assess the remaining life of the bridge. Analysis showed that a smaller stress band should be used for precise bridge life. This study will be useful in the conditional health assessment of steel railway bridges using an S-N curve based approach as well as a fracture-based approach.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Northern Railways and Indian Railways for allowing us to visit the bridge site and providing historical details like loading over the bridge and drawings of the bridge.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 28 • Issue 4 • November 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 4, 2023
Accepted: May 25, 2023
Published online: Aug 3, 2023
Published in print: Nov 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jan 3, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Bridge engineering
- Bridge tests
- Bridges
- Bridges (by material)
- Bridges (by type)
- Continuum mechanics
- Cracking
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering mechanics
- Fatigue (material)
- Fatigue life
- Field tests
- Fracture mechanics
- Girder bridges
- Infrastructure
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials engineering
- Rail transportation
- Railroad bridges
- Skew bridges
- Solid mechanics
- Steel bridges
- Stress (by type)
- Stress analysis
- Structural analysis
- Structural engineering
- Tests (by type)
- Transportation engineering
- Wood bridges
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